Books -- what would you like to see published?

[UserName]

What kind of content would you like to see in your ideal screenwriting how-to book? (Assuming you are already a consumer of such books.)

[JakeSchuster aka Ostroff]

I still find interviews with screenwriters (such as in Bill Froug's books) most enlightening. There's always a lot to learn from them.

[captain bligh]

the interview books are the only ones i've ever been able to get through. syd field and robert mckee and chris vogler -- in the words of pj harvey -- leave me dry.

[dlshooter]

"How not to write a screenplay", by Denny Martin Flynn is still my favorite on the subject right now. Hilarious and insightful look into that all important first chasm all successfull scripts must hurdle. Generally speaking I'm done with all the basic "how to" books whose covers you can interchange and not differentiate. Articles from insiders that detail the twists and turns of development are always good reads, "anatomy of a sale" type stuff. There's a book out called "Seven film student go to Hollywood" about, you guessed it, seven film grads trying to get started. The one guy actually got a TNT western made with Sam Shepperd, "Desperate Trail" I think it was. Pretty decent. The others six hopefulls...well. There's been a bunch of TV shows that follows aspiring actors around, a book like that about Screenwriters would be cool I think, something entertaining for a change. The last thing the world needs is a another 25$ book by some Film Prof with "industry experience" on how to write query's, proper format and what agents do, all followed of course by his/her expert analysis of "Casablanca".

[32piecesflair]

I'd like to see a large book full of stories of the journey from script to screen, like the sidebars were on How to Sell and Market Your Screenplay by Linda Wilen.

It included movies such as Runaway Bride, Men of Honor and told how the movie originated from concept to script to finished film and I found all the sidebars fascinating.

[captain bligh]

actually, a book like that exists, though not exactly what you described.

The First Time I Got Paid for It by Peter Lefcourt.

[dlshooter]

...first time i got paid for it was a great read and definitely worth the money, but a lot it is TV writers in the 60's and 70's. It's great to see what these writers went through to find and maintain success but the economics and mindset of the industry have changed so much that it borders on to being irrelevent in terms of researching what to do today.

[T Ziegler]

All of Zoditch's posts.

TZ